A Prequel to 'The Room?' Tommy Wiseau Reveals Plans in Reddit AMA
Tommy Wiseau has built a massive cult following around his 2003 vanity project The Room, an unintentionally hilarious drama that has become a staple of the midnight-movie circuit. The self-made actor, writer and director is giving TV a whirl with his original Hulu sitcom The Neighbors, but he isn’t finished with movies yet. In fact, he’s planning a follow-up to the film that made him famous. During his Reddit AMA yesterday, Wiseau revealed that he’s working on a prequel to The Room, which will further illuminate the story of his character Johnny, a bank employee with a heart of gold. “I am thinking of shooting next year,” Wiseau wrote.
In addition to his Room prequel, Wiseau mentioned two other movies he has plans to write, direct, and star in: a financial drama called Foreclosure (“It will be drama, but if somebody call it comedy? Whatever they call it, I don’t really care anymore”) and The Vampire from Alcatraz: King of Vampires, about a “good vampire” who “helps like Superman.”
And then there’s the one movie about Tommy Wiseau that is not being made by Tommy Wiseau: The Disaster Artist, based on The Room star Greg Sestero’s behind-the-scenes memoir. James Franco is set to direct the film adaptation and possibly play Wiseau, with his brother Dave Franco tentatively set to play Sestero. In the AMA, Wiseau said that he supports Franco’s project “100% perfect,” and that the two of them “have a lot in common, James Dean for example.” (Meaning that they both admire James Dean, presumably? Wiseau famously quoted Rebel Without a Cause in The Room, while Franco played Dean in a 2001 TV biopic.)
Elsewhere in the Reddit discussion, Wiseau answered fans’ burning questions about The Room. Among the revelations: The ill Claudette survives her breast cancer; the ambiguously-aged Denny is supposed to be a high school kid; and the character of cheating girlfriend Lisa “represents American society.” (“You can compare Lisa to Elizabeth Taylor, to when she did Cleopatra,” wrote Wiseau. “The ladies, they don’t have to wear jeans, they can wear dresses to be very powerful.”)
As for why the film is called The Room, Wiseau explained, “It’s a place where things happen. It could be a basement, it could be a forest. It could be anyplace. We all have it. It could be your apartment. It could be your car. You don’t get a ticket, you just do whatever you want.” Go here to read the full AMA.
Image credit: Josh Brasted/Getty Images
